


document my mind loss

by contranda



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: M/M, Repression, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:28:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23889730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contranda/pseuds/contranda
Summary: Obviously he thought he was straight. But he was also searching things like “am i gay quiz” while waiting in his pajamas for his best friend to come back so that they could eat breakfast together in the apartment that they’d basically been sharing on and off for five years.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 13
Kudos: 87





	document my mind loss

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this like six months ago while intoxicated at 12am and opened it today and went lmao okay this is actually good. this is technically meant to be part of a sprawling and emotional sequel to the goldfinch (2 gold 2 finch) but that complete work is doomed to live in my voice memos just as this excerpt lives in my gdrive titled "am i gay quiz?"
> 
> title is a lyric i chose at random from something soon by csh which is basically just an inside joke with the other people that know the plot of 2gold2finch.

Theo tried to resist the urge to look behind him. He was just going to do some googling and he knew Boris was out doing whatever he did when he went out in the mornings and if Theo did happen to glance around the empty living room to make sure no one was watching, no one else had to know.

It’s not like he was searching up anything bad, he reassured himself, as he cracked his laptop open. People probably searched this all the time. 

He very deliberately typed ‘www.goo’ into the search bar, clicking to auto-fill. He took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles, reminded himself he wasn’t hiding a stolen painting this time around. Carefully, Theo typed ‘am i gay quiz’ into the Google bar. He hit enter.

The chilly dread he’d been feeling when he typed dissipated for a moment as he waited for Boris’s shitty wifi to do its job. The moment dragged on long enough that he was about to close the browser and throw his laptop out of the window, a decision that was staved off by the page finally loading.

He quickly clicked the first result, staring up at the ceiling as it took its turn to load. He looked back down and was again tempted to throw his laptop out of the window. The quiz was asking him what he thought his sexuality was. 

He wanted to laugh. Obviously he thought he was straight. But he was also searching things like “am i gay quiz” while waiting in his pajamas for his best friend to come back so that they could eat breakfast together in the apartment that they’d basically been sharing on and off for five years. Maybe other guys did that too, it’s not like he had many friends besides Boris.

He clicked ‘straight’ and went to the next question. Now it was asking him what he wanted to be. He could say he wanted to be definitely straight, or ‘straight, i guess’. The difference was throwing him off. The best of the other options was just ‘I don’t know,’ which made a lot more sense than saying he wanted to be gay. He went to the next question. 

The following questions were less harrowing, and more like something a therapist would ask him at a first meeting before pursing her lips and before he never scheduled another appointment. 

What did he think of sex? He’d rather not talk about it.

How often did he fantasize about the same sex? He hadn’t fantasized about anyone since Pippa, and that was years ago. Any fleeting daydreams always wound back to his days in the desert with Boris, but memories hardly counted for fantasy. 

He clicked ‘I don’t know’ whenever he could. It was the quiz’s job to give him an answer, not to make him think about every man he’d ever accidentally made eye contact with. 

Was he homophobic? No, he didn’t think so. If Boris or someone he knew was gay he wouldn’t mind anyway.

Would he feel confident coming out? Another ‘I don’t know.’ It’s not like he had anything to come out as, he wasn’t keeping any big secrets anymore. Boris would have no problem. Theo remembered how apologetic he’d been about the painting all those years ago. He’d told him though, and they were still friends, maybe even the better for it without the secret standing between them.

He was thinking about Boris a lot while he took this test. It didn’t mean anything though, besides that Theo was worried he’d get home and see what he was doing. 

The next question asked whether he planned to get married someday. There was definitely some irony there. He clicked ‘maybe.’ All these years after Kitsey, he didn’t mind the idea of sharing his life with someone. Staying with Boris was nice enough, after all.

He worked through the rest of the quiz, answering ‘I don’t know’ whenever a question wanted him to think about himself too deeply.

He hesitated on the last question. What did he think of love? He was sure he’d been in love before. Maybe not Kitsey, and not Pippa, not really. When he thought of love he thought of sand and of the stench of chlorine seared into his nose, and of the painting, always the painting. None of the options for this question made much sense, much like the quiz as a whole if he thought about it. He clicked the most straightforward of the choices, saying he loves everybody for who they are. That sounded terribly trite, almost uncomfortably so, but it almost made sense. Blind love was the only reason his high school friend would take a bullet for him, even if it wasn’t the sort of love this online test was looking for.

He held his breath as he clicked for his results, exhaling when it took a while to load again. He was really going to have to talk to Boris about their router.

The page finished loading with a whirr from his computer’s fan. Emblazoned on the site’s light yellow background were the words ‘20% gay.’

He wanted to laugh, first at the notion of his sexuality being diagnosed in a percentage, then just at the result. He didn’t know why he’d put so much stock into a quiz that was now telling him he was as gay as it was likely to rain that day. It was probably made by some middle schooler, and, based off the site’s comments he was now listlessly scrolling through, was only taken seriously by other preteens. If anything, twenty percent gay was a fact he could live with. 

He closed the window, shut his laptop, set it on the couch beside him, pulled his knees up, and started to hyperventilate. Twenty percent gay. Badly made internet quiz. What did he think of love? Deserts and snow and-

The front door scraped open and Boris walked in. “Potter! Awake already?” He sounded positively gleeful to see Theo, who had slid his legs back into a normal, unassuming sitting position when he heard the lock click. “It is raining today. Perfect for movie marathon, no?”

Theo smiled over at him. “Sure, let’s just eat first. I was waiting for you to get back.”

~

For some reason, Boris seemed to think that watching Harry Potter with Theo was the peak of comedy. By the time they’d gotten through the first two, watched off DVDs from a beat-up box set Boris seemed to have stolen from a public library, Theo was mildly buzzed and wishing he picked a Fast and Furious marathon instead.

“I lost third DVD some time ago,” Boris said, popping the empty case open to prove his point. “There was an incident with a neighbor and a cat.”

“Its fine.” Theo sat up and pulled his legs out of Boris’s lap. “I’ll just find it online.”

He propped his laptop up on the couch between them and opened his browser, typing “www.goo” and letting it autofill again. 

“This one is called, uh Prisoner of something, right?”

“Azkaban, Potter. You should know.” Boris chuckled at his own joke, laughing harder when Theo looked up to glare at him.

“Okay, okay,” Theo muttered. “You’re really selling me on wanting to watch this.”

“No, come on. It will be good movie.”

Theo adjusted the laptop screen and typed ‘a’ into the search bar, watching in horror as Google tried to autofill his last searches, ‘am i gay quiz’ dropping down in damning purple.

He slammed his computer shut, not realizing he’d stood up until he was halfway out of the room. 

“I- sorry, I just remembered I have a lot of work to do back in New York.” Theo half turned, then turned back to Boris, who was looking up at him with a mixture of bemusement and surprise.

“What is-”

Theo cut him off. “I need to get back to the city, sorry, so sorry about the Google, and uh, the movie.” He walked to the guest room and shoved his computer and clothes into his bag.

When he walked back out, Boris was waiting in the hallway. “What are you doing? Can we talk about this?”

Theo pushed past him. “Something hap- something came up, and I can’t be here now. I need to leave.”

He had made it to the front door without turning around. He finally faced Boris, looking over his shoulder instead of at his face, which was now showing more hurt than confusion.

“Potter, did I do something?”

Theo shook his head, and tried to open the door, remembered to unlock it, and opened it. “No, I just need to go. To New York. I’ll be in touch. I just need a few days to sort some things out.”

He walked out, closed the door behind him. He went down the stairs and out onto the street, his laptop weighing his bag down, causing the strap to dig into his shoulder with every step.


End file.
